Put a little mustard on it!

With a dozen hearts and over 5 dozen installs in under 24 hours, PW-DOS Command Line Watchface for Pebble is taking off in ways I’d never imagined! Version 1.2 brings a new “animated” DIR, simulating an unseen user typing the command in the closing seconds of each minute, followed by the “old” file listing scrolling up and being replaced with the new. □＿ヾ(･_･ )

Technically there’s a subtle inaccuracy in the present functionality – if you notice it, let me know in the comments below! ￣～￣

Anxious to test the new Raspberry Pi 2‘s performance, I breezed through NOOBS Setup without paying a huge amount of attention or making many changes to the default setup. And the new quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and 1GB of RAM did not disappoint: starting X and loading web pages on the included browser was a delight compared to my original 256MB rev1 board; but what bothered me after the initial excitement of increased performance was a large black border around the desktop, which prevented the full 1920×1080 pixels from being utilized, and LXRandR was reporting a somewhat bizarre resolution of 1776×952.

I do not recall encountering anything like this with my rev1 B, or my daughter’s B+ (although the latter is running Kano rather than Raspbian), and some quick searching (on the Pi itself – the Read More…

With their first full-length album still to come in 2015, Say Lou Lou have teamed up with legendary producer Lindstrøm, uniting their dreamy vocals with his disco-tastic synths in a delightfully infectious new single!

Reading is an extremely important part of my life, though I seldom find the chance for “pleasure reading” as opposed to the more software development-oriented tomes you’ll typically find here. I do, whenever I am able to, attempt a “summer read”, and since he is one of my absolute favorite authors (and easy Top 2 Douglas!), and his publishing cadence seemed, at the time, to match my appetite, I can recall Douglas Coupland novels accompanying many treasured summer memories – starting with Microserfs just before heading to Redmond myself, and ending, if I recall, with my devouring The Gum Thief on a beautiful Cayman beach (and the resultant extreme sunburn from being unable to put it down).

After a lapse during which I found almost no time for fiction, I resumed with Generation A last year, which instantly swept me back into that wonderful milieu of cultural touchstones and memes that Coupland creates so beautifully. I was frustrated to find no other publications since The Gum Thief, and while pop-up project Temp kept me busy for a while, it was the announcement of Read More…

Just backed this on Kickstarter: MicroView is an ATmega328P-based, Arduino-compatible DIP package with built-in 64×48 OLED display. A beefier chip might have been nice, a la Teensy, but the 328 should be plenty for most projects, and really this OSHW project is about giving you that integrated display, as well as widgets to help you leverage it in just a few lines of code. Backers around the world can get their hands on one for just $45 shipped, or $55 for one MicroView plus USB-Serial Programmer (looks like a nice little unit, and more fun than fiddling with an FTDI Friend and half a dozen wires, so I went for it). SparkFun are handling manufacturing and fulfillment, so I’ll be looking out for a little red box sometime in August!

The first “trip”, however, did not seem to “do anything” – there were no audio alerts, and the app didn’t seem to indicate that anything was “happening”. [Update: Automatic Support got back to me in < 24 hours and explained this was due to a firmware update in progress] Toward the end of my second trip, however, I did finally notice a “hard brake” alert, and upon arriving, found that both trips were logged to my phone after all. The trip summary with MPG, cost, “driving feedback” and a little route map was exciting to see. Though that is really all it does for the most part, other than summarizing the same data each week, as well as diagnosing “check engine” lights should they happen to arise.

Evernote for Pebble allows users to browse Notebooks, Reminders, Checklists, Shortcuts, Tags, “Nearby” Notes (based on current location), and Saved Searches and view basic, raw note text. Formatting is not preserved – this has been problematic for me since I tend to use strikethrough to cross items off of lists – though I may start using more Checklists since these are the one type of content that can be edited right from the Pebble. The app is being marketed as v1.0, but at times feels more like a beta. I have 1000s of Notes, and dozens of Notebooks, so may be an edge case, but I encounter frequent “Loading…” messages while waiting for content to be displayed, and even the occasional “App crashed” – but Pebble users, like any earlier adopters, are used to the occasional hiccup. Such convenient access to the immense body of information that is my Notes is of tremendous value, and less-than-stellar performance and the occasional crash is a small price to pay. Evernote and Pebble are an obvious symbiotic pair, each of whose utility and enjoyment are increased by the other.